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past, strength, will, pride, faith.
    By the way you looking, I say, about now, an in-patient program would do you good.
    Cool, cool, I see you up there on your stallion, Michael says. But check it: make sure you hold them reins real, real tight.
    He don’t hazard my way again. He opens his window, and fake busies himself with emptying his pockets of junk. He gets off on Skidmore and waves good-bye at half-mast.
    Stops later, when I get off, it seems as if I’ve stepped into a movie on pause the whole last year. I tug my things past a totaled car and yards of ankle-length grass, past a bent street pole and a pair of tagged stop signs, tug it up to the front gate of the Piedmonts, a weathered apartment complex enclosed by a tall wrought-iron fence. I buzz and smoke the next-to-last cig in my pack while I wait. The lady that shows clasps my hand in hers with strength. She leads me to a building in the back that houses an office furnished with an oak desk, lawn chairs, and a rack of color-coded keys. She hands me a sheet and tells me to read it with care. It’s our rules, she says. Rules beyond your program contract. She tells me the complex is a drug-free zone, that any tenant caught on the premises with drugs or paraphernalia will be reported to the police and put out.
    She leads me to my unit, offers a canned script of assurances, and skirts off the moment I turn the bolt. I drop my bags and kick my heels off by the front door. Someone has slapped fresh paint on the walls, shampooed streaks in the carpet, nice touches, but a front room won’t tell you whether you can stand a place. To know that, you best get to checking the bathroom. How wide this bathroom is, if you stretch out your arms you can palm both walls, and how high, if I hadn’t kicked off my heels, I could almost touch the fan.. The tile is mismatched and curls where it should lie down. The tub and toilet are scrubbed to off white. When I trust the faucet, it spits rusted water that takes a moment to stream clear.
    You’ve been here before, I tell myself. Weaker and with less to lose.
    I take a long breath in.
    Let a big breath out.
    Take a long breath in.
    Exhale—enormous.
    Air sucks through the fan. Cold tile bites through a hole in my stockings. I take out the picture of my boys and wedge it in a corner of the mirror and hit the light switch. The bulb flickers to a soft glow and I finger the photo’s curled edges—see my three boys, my precious loves, in all the light there is.

Chapter 4
    â€¦ but it’s tough when most years, most days,
she looks so vintage.
—Champ
    Back when we were straight. When we were living with my great-grands in the house on Sixth, home, back when Mom’s checks kept me and KJ laced in new shirts and laden with toys, back when she kept a corporate job that paid a bonus, back then Mom came home at the same time day in, day out. I’d sit at my window and watch her pull up (we kept a new ride back then), and would book to the top of the steps and damn near implode waiting for her to sway through the door dressed to impress the world in wool-blend pants and silk blouse or a skirt suit with a broach pinned to her lapel, plus jewels you could hock for a new self on her fingers and wrists. The routine. Mom would say my name the way only she could, the way only she can, and flash a smile that never seemed even infinitesimally fake. Then she’d call me down, doff the tenny shoes she wore to and from work but never anywhere else, bright white shoes she kept stitched with sparkling double-knotted laces yanked so tight it’s a wonder her feet never fell off from lack of blood. My mother would grip me in one of her spine-bending-breath-stopping hugs, set me free, and, while I was working to catch my wind, would shuffle off towards the kitchen where my great-grandparents,Mama Liza and Bubba, were waiting to hear of her day. My M.O. was I’d lag, wait till Mom was well out of sight,